green leaf lettuce

What I Made – Week 6

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment
Let’s start with the most photogenic dish of the week, and also a surprisingly easy one! We used arctic char instead of the bass, and swapped the arugula for regular old lettuce.
This potatoes, fennel, and sausage skillet is an example of how I followed a recipe, but completely changed everything. I didn’t think my skillet was big enough to cook everything together, so I roasted the potatoes in the oven, adding the sliced fennel halfway through. I browned the sausage and onions in the pan, and cooked the onions in the sauce to make the glaze. Then I just topped the potatoes and fennel with the glazed onions and sausage. It was tasty, but heavy for a summer meal.
A pretty straightforward taco salad with last week’s shredded beef. We mixed a tablespoon or two of hot salsa and a tablespoon or so of spice blend into the beef to amp up the taco flavor.
I’ve made this recipe for salmon and napa cabbage many times, but didn’t follow the directions for the fish as closely this time. Do as the recipe says, not as I did if you want delicious crispy skin.
Another meal where I made some changes for the texture. I pan fried the tofu instead of marinating it, then just added oil to the marinade from the recipe to make a dressing. We left off the rice noodles this time, but I also like bean thread noodles on this.
Part salad, part grain bowl, the basic formula for this quinoa base with a lemon scallion vinaigrette and whatever cheese, dried fruit, and nuts you have (or not) is the recipe I always go to when I have a leafy green and no ideas for dinner.
Behold the collard breakfast sandwich! We followed the recipe instructions for the collards but managed to change just about everything else: an English muffin instead of a biscuit, peach bourbon jam instead of the aioli, country ham instead of pancetta, and a fried egg in place of the scrambled. But it tasted very good anyway.
Last but not least, rhubarb! lemon! cheesecake! I like to layer the curd throughout the cheesecake rather than just swirling it on top for maximum combination per bite. It’s also great with gluten free cookies for the crust.
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What I’ve Planned – Week 6

/ CSA in the City / 1 Comment

If you though the basket couldn’t get more green and leafy after last week, you will be amazed at how much we got for Week 6! This may be the time to start stocking the freezer for later months, if it weren’t too hot to turn on the stove most days!

I still need to make plans for the kale, but I’ll either toss it in with the chicken sausage and potatoes or hope it holds up in the crisper until I get a better idea!

What I Made – Winter Week 15/15

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I had made this gnocchi with sunchokes and frozen them. To make this dinner, we sautéed some spinach with red pepper flakes and tossed the gnocchi in browned butter.
Cool weather early in the week made a good time for pot roast to use up carrots we had hanging around the crisper for previous weeks.
In addition to the dandelion greens, we also chopped up the greens that came on our radishes and turnips and included them in this pasta dish too!
I’d made and canned plum sauce last year, so I used it to glaze pork tenderloin, then roasted some turnips, radishes, and chickpeas to load up thi salad.
The photo makes this look like buffalo chicken, but it’s spicy halal cart inspired chicken and onions, with seasoned rice and parsley-yogurt sauce. (I would cut way back on the sugar in the sauce next time!)
The week’s final salad was topped with cellophane noodles and peanut tempeh, all covered with a tahini salad dressing.

What I’ve Planned – Winter Week 15/15

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With a more limited ability to grab groceries, we’ve tried to use a lot of the flavors and ingredients we have already for meals through the week. Colder weather this week means heavier meals mixed in with salads (still have to use up all that lettuce, after all!)

What I Got – Winter Week 15/15

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It’s the last week of winter! Well at least according to the CSA, there are plenty of cool, wet days ahead for us, I think.

Clockwise from left: spinach, green leaf lettuce, Asian greens, Italian parsley, green dandelion, Egyptian walking onion, rhubarb, purple radishes, Hakurei turnips

What I’ve Planned – Week 15

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I’ve got an ambitious plan to make up for lost time with my menu this week, including trying to use veggies that have been languishing in the crisper for several weeks now. (Looking at you, cabbage!)

Some old favorites:

And some new ideas:

  • Plum cake (I’ll probably freeze this for later)

I’m also going to see if the cayennes ripen to red on the counter, then dehydrate and crush them to make homemade red pepper flakes!

What I Made – Week 14

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As expected, a week of travel meant that I did not do much cooking this week. Here’s what I was able to make.

  • Chicken and sausage gumbo with okra and peppers
  • Vietnamese noodle salad (inspired by this recipe, but with peanut tempeh instead of chicken)
  • The unattractive but delicious fruit platz with plums.

    • Here’s the before and after of the jalapeños I pickled

    The gloves are key to protect your hands from any residual burning! I’ll clean out seeds from the top rings of the pepper closest to the stem, but leave the ones shown here pretty much as-is.

    The entire bag I got made one very full quart jar. I heat the brine from this recipe to dissolve the salt and pour it over the peppers.

    What I’ve Planned – Week 14

    / CSA in the City / 2 Comments

    Another week where I won’t be able to do much in the way of cooking, so this will be a very short list. Hopefully the squash will keep until next weekend when I can figure out how to best use them!

    I also pickled the radishes and dried the grape tomatoes in the dehydrator this weekend. The tomatoes will either be diced and frozen or turned into sauce, I haven’t yet decided.

    What I Got – Week 14 2019

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    Back row from left: Yellow Tomatoes, Centercut Squash, Yellow Peaches, Plums, Green Okra

    Front from left: Slicing Cucumbers, Red Radishes, Red Grape Tomatoes, Green Leaf Lettuce, Little Sweetie Cantaloupe, Escamillo Peppers

    (True story, when I was lifting my basket out of the shopping cart while leaving the store after my pick up this week, a peach fell out of my basket, bounced down a stair, and rolled down the sidewalk, stopping just short of 6 lanes of traffic. You definitely know I walked down there, dusted it off, and took it on home with me. I washed it, peeled it, cut out the bruised part and I plan to eat it over cottage cheese for breakfast tomorrow! No peach left behind! 🙈)